As more academics reach Fedi, please PLEASE consider not doing research on users here without explicit opt-in consent
This isn't a zoo
It's not just condescending for you to treat us that way, it's also against a lot of instances' terms of use
See "Use of Scholar Social for research" at the following link for an example:
@socrates from what I've been able to detect, you know what you're doing over there. I've advised a couple scholars of note, in hopes that they find a home on scholar.social
Me, well, I'm more of a dork. But I appreciate things done well. Kudos!
@socrates Yeah this isn't a zoo.
Is there a zoo nearby?
As more academics reach Fedi, please PLEASE consider not doing research on users here without explicit opt-in consent This isn't a zoo It's not just condescending for you to treat us that way, it's also against a lot of instances' terms of use See "Use of Scholar Social for research" at the following link for an example: https://scholar.social/privacy-policy
@socrates Thank you for sharing! I’m not quite sure if I agree with that policy. I feel like a post that is set to be publicly accessible constitutes public communication.
I would agree that publishing more than just anonymized aggregate data or IDs (like Twitters TOS suggest) is out of the question but analyzing public communication can’t require a specific opt-in from every user. That does not seem feasible to me.
@Kudusch @socrates I feel like Kususch's stance on this is probably more nuanced than is coming across in this thread, but FWIW the Association of Internet Researchers argues, as a scholarly community, that context matters when deciding what should count as "public" for the purpose of research. I recommend reading this post by Hugh Rundle for an idea of how long-time Mastodon users have viewed their contributions and privacy in context. https://www.hughrundle.net/home-invasion/
[Edited for clarity]
@josh @Kudusch Okay the context here is that we told you explicitly not to do it and now you're aware of that expectation
Many of our users came here to *avoid* being included in Cambridge Analytica type situations and we're telling you: No
That's the context
If a person talking in a public place like a coffee shop told you "stop writing down everything I'm saying," what would the right thing to do be?
@socrates @josh I definitely get what you are saying. An explicit opt-out like for the users of scholar.social must be considered. That's basic research ethics.
My background is in disinformation studies, where there are usually very little good-faith actors. Users actively using the fediverse to spread (potentially harmful) misinformation are tough to identify before somehow accessing public communication at large.
@socrates @josh That would still leave the issue of bad-faith actors unsolved, but actually building research consent into the protocol itself might be a good start!
Because, if I'd access the API from an instance where research is even explicit allowed, I still might get content from users of instances, where it is not. Being able to just filter out user's content that opted-out would be very helpful.
I guess that many fellow linguists and social media researchers who, like me, are new here, are already itching to compile corpora from Mastodon data. I have to admit, so do I. But all I can find on #scraping in toots, server rules and blogs is: "Don't! Scrape! Mastodon!" May this be the right time to rethink ingrained research habits, reconsider ethical standards and adapt to a new community and a different social media culture? Any thoughts? #researchethics @linguistics #corpuslinguistics
@josh @Kudusch @socrates And it's helpful to think of it this way, too: I leave my apartment to get groceries, but that doesn't mean it's okay for someone to snap my photo and publish it online.
I leave my curtains open sometimes for natural light, but that doesn't mean a neighbor can film me and upload the video anywhere they like.
@josh @Gemma @socrates Marketing/for-profit research and publicly funded, academic research should probably be differentiated in this discussion.
On a technical level, users do have the option on Mastodon to be excluded in the public timeline/user directory. I’m not sure there needs to be another level of opt-in/out for access to their content.
@Kudusch @josh I believe scraping tools can bypass that, if I'm not mistaken, but others who know better than me could give an actual answer.
When I hear that marketing and academic research should be differentiated, what it sounds like is that boundaries don't really matter. When you don't belong to a marginalized and frequently exploited group, it probably seems like it shouldn't matter, or, if it does, it should be an easy fix (which it's not, as Matthew has shown us).
@Kudusch @josh And I've been seeing that a lot since the influx started. "Well just [do XYZ] if you don't like it." We did. We had blocked that journalist. He lifted someone's content anyway.
It's so easy for people with that kind of power to talk to people to obtain written informed consent, and for many projects it's a requirement. That's part of the solution.
@Kudusch @socrates The "Use of Scholar Social for research" does not require a specific opt-in for every user. They are requiring compliance with the ethical standards for social science research in North America.
Europeans who find them too onerous should find another field of research because GDPR has much higher penalties.
@socrates When I was doing my honors thesis research it would have been easier to get IRB approval to just "scrape" public posts without consent, than it was to get approval to talk to neurodivergent folks on here with consent.
I had to jump through so many hoops to get approval for an opt-in survey because they questioned whether neurodivergent folks could consent to participate.
It's a messed up standard that needs to be re-examined
There is a double standard in academic social and ecological research, to be sure. The International Society of Ethnobiologists code of ethics is a really thorough and good example <https://www.ethnobiology.net/what-we-do/core-programs/ise-ethics-program/code-of-ethics/>, but we have found that academic collaborators in the life and social sciences from North American and European universities were (1) angry at us for insisting on these standards and (2) encouraged their students to circumvent our protocols when we were not actually present. It was hugely destructive. Some anthros we know are trustworthy.
The Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology has its origins in the Declaration of Belém, agreed upon in 1988 at the founding of the International Society of Ethnobiology (in Belém, Brazil). The Code of Ethics was initiated in 1996 and completed in 2006. The final version, adopted by the ISE membership at... Read more »
@socrates Conducting research on people is, in my mind, no different than any other social interaction: consent is a prerequisite, can be withdrawn at any point, and should never be assumed.
It bothers me that there are researchers out there that don't consider mining an online forum's posts to be unethical, especially when consent is explicitly not given in the site's terms of service.
just a tiny reminder from a passer-by:
Germany has recently amended its law, so "gross trivialization" of ALL genocides, crimes against humanity and war crime around the world, even those that has not been established by a national or international court, have now been criminalized in Germany
that will relocate certain abhorrent speech from category 2 "Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism" to category 3
tho I am sure users here are much more civil
Source:
https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-916934
Administrative account
Lightning Bjornsson* 
🌳ybaumy 🌳🐈⬛
Saint Baal-MAŠ
Ryan Schultz
Malleus
Steve Jankowski
Dr. Tim Schatto-Eckrodt
Josh Braun
Mark Dang-Anh
Gemma Rex
Frost「
｜
｜霜の狼｜人面獣心」🐺❄️
OpenDNA⚙️
Toran J. Shaw
Autistic Anthropologist
Will Tuladhar-Douglas
xryxix
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
ArdentArchivist
AutisticMumTo3 She/her
Christopher Rodriguez
Tom
Charlotte Walker
John S. Erickson 🙏
Huxley